Chernobyl Reminds Us that Nukes are NOT Green

[midnight armadillo]

Published on Saturday, April 28, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Chernobyl Reminds Us that Nukes are NOT Green
by Harvey Wasserman

Twenty-one years ago this week, lethal radiation poured into the breezes over Europe and into the jet stream above, carrying death and disease around the planet.

It could be happening again as you read this: either by error, as at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or by terror, as could have happened on September 11, 2001.

Those who now advocate a “rebirth” of this failed technology forget what happened during these “impossible” catastrophes, or refuse to face their apocalyptic reality, both ecological and financial.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/28/824/

-----------------

It should be noted that Harvey Wasserman has a huge beef against nuclear power, and appears to find any mention of it to be outrageous in the extreme. This comment at the bottom of the page from is pretty funny:

purvis ames April 29th, 2007 7:00 am

Why do people keep dismissing wind, solar, and tidal as impractical? Answer: They are not easily monopolizable. Oil, coal, and nuclear fission energy are controlled by a tiny cabal for its own benefit. Whatever happened to nuclear fusion energy where the fuel is sea water and the “waste” is fresh water? Nobody even talks about it anymore and that’s the way the energy cabal likes it.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Dominion theocracy? The fact that with a little perspicacity Exxon

could of made Trillions off the sun ,and eventually will be ostracized by the same two things that gave them their wealth ,Fear and Convenience.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Chernobyl and TMI Older Designs

Both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were older designs and far more dangerous than current nuclear power plant designs. Neither plant was idiot-proof, which was why both the Chernobyl plant blew and why TMI had an accident. The former was undergoing an idiot experiment while the latter's coolant system wasn't used properly.

I don't deny the casualties from Chernobyl. Just how many people actually died as a result of the TMI plant's accident, though, seems to be one of those inconvenient facts that anti-nuclear activists like to shy away from.

I concur with some of the other posters here. Nuclear power DOES have risks, and there are problems associated with fission power, but nukes are far safer for the public's health than the filth belched out of coal-fired plants that kill tens of thousands every year. Moreover, nuclear plants contribute far, far less to the increasing consequences of global warming and very, very little to acid rain.

[midnight armadillo]

4. Coal plants

Sometimes I tell people I would much rather live next to a nuke than a coal plant, and they look at me like I've just sprouted antlers.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Anti-nuclearists and 9-11

What is it with (some of) these guys, anyway? They invoke 9-11 almost as much as the hoodlums running the Executive Branch ...

... and then they accuse us pro-nuclearists of being in bed with Eeevil Dick Cheney!

--p!

[bananas]

17. Quite the opposite

It's the pro-nukes who sound like Condi, "Nobody could've expected it",
when it's been the subject of discussion for decades,
and even used as a plotline for novels, books, tv shows, and movies.

[hunter]

18. Everything I know I learned from novels, books, tv shows, and movies.

Like you can run away from an explosion, a good guy can dodge machine gun bullets, a Macintosh can be used to write a computer virus that can take out an alien warship, dinosaurs can be recreated from their DNA and the bite of a radioactive (genetically engineered???) spider can turn you into a superhero!

Wow! Meryl Strep and Cher were sooooooooo HOT in Silkwood! :evilgrin:

Woohoo! And the China Syndrome! Jane Fonda was such a babe!

Carry on...

[bananas]

19. Like I said, just like Condi - thanks for being an example. nt

[hunter]

23. I'm a LIHOP sort of guy re: 911

If you are implying I'd let a nuclear accident happen on purpose, well honestly, I'm not such a hard-core environmentalist as that. The Chernobyl accident did create an instant wilderness area, but I don't advocate nuclear accidents as a way of accomplishing such.

Or did you mean something else? Hard to say with that "nt"

[Dogmudgeon]

29. Of which nuclear disaster(s) are you writing?

There has been ONE disastrous reactor failure, and it's part of the subject line. And just who said "Nobody could've expected it"?

I've seen plenty of melodramatic articles about a "nuclear 9-11". It seems to be a popular approach that many anti-nuclearists take to give the impression that they are serious thinkers, but their scenarios are simple and crude agitprop. Nuclear engineers and scientists already put a lot of time and effort into scenario analysis -- the "what ifs" and "expect the unexpected" stuff. They also use any number of empirical methods so that their results can be checked, challenged, refined, and improved, regardless of ideology or politics.

For that, they are regularly mocked by so-called progressive thinkers.

And I've also seen many pro-nuclearists warning of the possibility of catastrophic reactor failures with the model used at Chernobyl. Before Chernobyl; afterward, a lot of nuclear advocates were politely saying "I told you so" and pushing for better technical surveillance. (I believe that four more such reactors are still in use, and should be decommissioned immediately.)

In fact, I recall that during the early 1980s, a number of nuclear scientists were advocating that the USA give technical and material aid to the disintegrating USSR to help it safely decommission its aging reactors and secure its nuclear material. The Reagan cabal wouldn't hear of it.

--p!

[NNadir]

5. Actually the opposite is true.

Chernobyl shows that the worst case for nuclear power is not as bad as the best case for fossil fuels.

It is mere foolishness to assert otherwise.

The pet renewable systems, which combined cannot produce 5 exajoules of primary energy (out of 470 exajoules of energy demand) demonstrate, on the other hand, nothing more that the dangerous practice of denial and self-delusion.

[gravity]

6. Ironically, the Chernobyl helped out the wildlife in the area

Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving
Kate Ravilious
for National Geographic News
April 26, 2006

The effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe are still being felt today—whole towns lie abandoned, and cancer rates in people living close to the affected areas are abnormally high.

But it turns out that the radioactive cloud may have a silver lining. Recent studies suggest that the 19-mile (30-kilometer) "exclusion zone" set up around the reactor has turned into a wildlife haven.

...

Plants and trees have sprung back to life, and rare species, such as lynx, Przewalski's horses, and eagle owls, are thriving where most humans fear to tread.

...

But Mousseau is less optimistic. "One of the great ironies of this particular tragedy is that many animals are doing considerably better than when the humans were there," he said.

"But it would be a mistake to conclude they are doing better than in a control area. We just don't know what is normal . There just haven't been enough scientific studies done."

More: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0426_060426_chernobyl.html

Of course, the area would have been better there wasn't a nuclear disaster to begin with, but a nuclear disaster prevents an even more destructive force, us, from destroying the environment.

[hunter]

7. People are worse than nuclear waste.

By any measure.

That's the awful, awful truth that Chernobyl demonstrated.

Nuclear waste fades away and is sequestered, but people are Mother Earth's chronic viral infection.

[jimlup]

8. Wasserman's comment telling

Yeah, Wasserman wouldn't like a nuclear reactor regardless of what it solved and how safe it was. I have my own troubles with nuclear fission energy. I do agree that the next generation of fission reactors are worth considering given the CO2 crises. I'm not sure that they are any less safe than nuclear weapons and the reactors associated with them, nor are they less safe than gasoline and oil resevoirs which are the target of many current terrorist threats.

Wasserman's statement is true enough until he starts talking about nuclear fusion. Unfortunately, the technology for controlled nuclear fusion has not arrived as soon as many predicted. This isn't the workings of the "energy cabal" despite Wasserman's wishes to the contrary. Though I would agree with him that there does exist an "energy cabal", they have a significant grip on political power worldwide but they aren't capable of adjusting scientific and technical reality yet, though in some instances they are trying.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. Successful Nuclear Fusion Won't Be Invented Here

I'm increasingly convinced that the development of reliable nuclear fusion for power generation won't be invented in the US. It's likely to be developed somewhere in East Asia, where the powers that be aren't beholden to the "awl bidness" like the Republican functionaries who'll linger on in the Energy Department long after Dubya is out the door or the utility types who'll want to use fusion to boil water.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

An aside to Freeper lurkers and Michelle Malkin wanna-bes:

Does saying this make me happy? No, it doesn't. It makes me sad and angry. I'd rather that successful nuclear power for electrical generation be developed here in the USA. Un fortunately after watching the behavior of both the US private and public sectors, I don't think that this is gonna happen

[gravity]

10. There is an international effort to develop it

Green light for nuclear fusion project
14:55 21 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist Tech and AFP

A seven-member international consortium signed a formal agreement on Tuesday to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion reactor that will emulate the nuclear processes of the Sun.

"This is a new step in an exceptional adventure," French President Jacques Chirac said at the signing ceremony in Paris, France. The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves, although nuclear fusion remains an unproven technology (see No future for fusion power, says top scientist).

Representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States signed the pact, sealing a decade of negotiations.

The $12.8 billion (€10 billion) reactor will be built in Cadarache, southern France, over the course of a decade, starting in 2008. Originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, the facility is now known officially by its initials ITER (meaning "the way" in Latin).

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10633-green-light-for-nuclear-fusion-project.html

[NNadir]

11. It's really a waste, and a silly one at that.

It is immediately clear that this reactor will depend wholly on fission infrastructure. It would be far wiser to just build four or five new fission reactors with this money.

Fusion is really not that attractive. Mostly it's marketing, I think. People want to believe in it, but it will take a many, many, many decades to make it available on the scale of fission energy. It's kind of like solar energy, inasmuch as it's really only attractive when the scale is trivial. Mark my words, if solar energy ever gets to an exajoule, people are going to be screaming about the waste and environmental impact, even though it will never be as bad as natural gas. (People should be screaming about gas.)

In any case, if we can't convince ourselves to use fission energy, which is easily the safest energy available by a long shot, it's really hard to imagine us using fusion energy.

[gravity]

12. Fusion has lots of potential

If we can ever harness the power, then our energy problems would be solved. It would be clean and we would have a limitless supply of fuel, and we wouldn't have the nuclear waste problem we have with our current nuclear power plants. It could also be used on a large scale, unlike many of the alternative energies we have today.

It's a long term investment, and they say that it could take 50 years before it becomes a commercially viable source of energy, but it's worth researching.

[NNadir]

13. Well that's the spin. It's not true though.

I don't understand why no one can get it through their heads that the fusion reaction is a tritium reaction.

There is no way that the world is even close, in it's wildest dreams, to breeding tritium, unless of course, one is using the fusion neutrons for multiplying neutrons in heavy actinides. In this case, we should just cut to the chase and simply use the actinides for fission.

In fifty years the world has accumulated enough tritium to run one small fusion reactor for about six months.

Mostly this is about petting a fantasy.

As I indicated fission is already safe and clean. It is probably the best form of energy we will have for many centuries. If we are such idiots that we can't get that verifiable fact through our head, it is hardly likely that we will be willing to do what a fusion infrastructure will require.

[gravity]

14. Tritium isn't the biggest problem

They can already produce it today from lithium, and researching new ways to produce it more efficiently.

Again, we don't know if fusion will be better or economically competitive in the future, but I believe it's worth the research, especially compared to the vast amounts of money we spend on fossil fuels. You could be right, but there is no way of telling right now.

I agree the fission is the best solution we have right now though.

[NNadir]

15. It is produced from lithium using fission neutrons.

Therefore it follows that one needs a fission infrastructure. That's all I'm saying.

Tritium is a big limitation on the utility of fusion and it cannot displace fission.

[bananas]

20. It will be produced from lithium using fusion neutrons. nt

[NNadir]

22. Not if you can count.

I realize that zero people who are anti-nuclear actually know any nuclear physics, but the D+T fusion reaction is mononeutronic. Thus when structural materials absorb neutrons or they leak, by definition fusion reactors cannot be breeders.

I have had occassion to tour the Princeton Plasma Physics lab a few years ago and I had a nice little chat with a fellow on precisely this topic. When I pointed out this matter, he started to give a lecture on why fission power is safe. When I explained that he didn't need to tell me that, he explained that the most reasonable approach to getting enough neutrons to make tritium is to use the 14 MeV neutrons of fusion reaction to cause induce fission in actinides (from spent nuclear fission fuel) providing neutrons to make tritium.

Thus fusion will depend on a fission infrastructure, no matter how many lies people tell themselves to the contrary.

Fusion is a pipe dream. The main reason it is attractive is because it doesn't exist, much like the grand solar future, or the grand wind future, or the grand tidal future don't exist. The first time any of these forms of energy becomes significant, you will begin to hear all sorts of whining.

I am thoroughly amused by all of the anti-biofuel threads of late. I note that there is a real attempt to scale biofuels, and immediately, upon substititution of reality for happy face talk, there is endless criticism.

Fusion will not scale to what nuclear fission does in the life time of any single person who is now alive, and the main reason is nothing more than physic.

[bananas]

25. ITER FAQ

"some "startup" supplies of tritium will be needed ... After that, fusion should have enough excess on its own."

http://www.iter.org/FAQ/TR3.htm

What about in future power reactors?

Machines after ITER will have to breed tritium from the outset. However, in practice it will take several months of operation for the tritium extraction and tokamak systems to settle down. This means inventories of tritium have to build up in the tritium extraction system and tokamak to saturation levels before a steady state of production is reached, so some "startup" supplies of tritium will be needed from external sources.

A few kg has therfore to be supplied externally per reactor, which basically sits locked up in systems until decommissioning, when it can be re-used to startup another new reactor. As long as CANDU type reactors are operating (and they are one of the most cost-effective), one can expect such a supply of tritium , though not large, to be sufficient to get a fusion-based energy economy started. After that, fusion should have enough excess on its own.

The ability to maintain this fuel balance depends on the design of tritium-breeding blankets. For every fusion reaction occuring in the plasma, one tritium atom has to be created in the surrounding blanket. This is achieved by reacting as many fusion neutrons in lithium as possible, and where shortfalls occur due to the presence of structural materials, access ports, and divertor, as well as normal radioactive decay of tritium, compensating by using the most economic combination of neutron multipliers (e.g. beryllium or lead) or lithium enriched in 6Li. Getting this tritium economy right, so that a subsequent demonstration plant can be confidently designed and then operate for its full life and spawn further devices thereafter, makes the test blanket module development on ITER of high strategic importance for DT-based fusion development.

Updated 16 November, 2004

[NNadir]

26. Well, if you know physics, you can understand what this statement means.

If you don't, you google.

First of all, it is clear from the statement that they don't actually know how to breed tritium and are thus doing experiments. Of course it they made realistic statements about the matter, it is likely that anti-nuclear ignorance squad would begin to object.

Breeding is measured by a breeding ratio that need not be unity. It can be greater than unity of less than unity. As it happens every nuclear reactor has a breeding ratio. It may be possible to recover some neutrons lost by fusion reactors, but on the other hand, cross sections for 14 MeV neutrons are not known for many types of reactions. Most light water reactors operating in the world today, more than 400 industrial scale devices serving hundreds of millions of people, have breeding ratios between 0.7 and 0.9, meaning that they make less than one fissionable nucleus than they consume. The physics of changing the breeding ratio for fission reactors is well understood and has been demonstrated in many places around the world. In fact, such technology is decades old.

The physics of breeding tritium from fusion reactors has never been demonstrated by contrast, and people are only waving their hands saying it could happen. No fusion reactor has ever generated electricity on this planet, however, and so the matter is just pure speculation.

If you don't know what you're talking about, you can always make stuff up though. You can completely misconstrue and represent what the word "breeding" means, especially if you assume you are speaking to people as poorly educated as yourself.

It is very clear that the statement "Machines after ITER will have to breed tritium from the outset" that the prepositional phrase "after ITER" means that ITER will not do this. Why? Because they have no fucking idea how to do it. They are merely speculating, hoping that people who aren't too analytical or too knowledgeable will not pick up on what this statement means.

Fusion power is right now pure hype and wishful thinking, just slightly below the level of the wind and solar fantasy. There's not many people on the planet who believes fusion technology will be available on an exajoule scale in 50 years, although there are obviously lots of people trying to get research dollars by playing on people's unreasonable hopes that might happen. Of course, a lot of things are more likely, including wholesale destruction of the earth's ecology from climate change, a phenomena that has been observed now for several decades and which is currently accelerating rapidly.

There is only one scalable exajoule scale form of greenhouse gas free energy now on the table. It is great that at least one such form exists, because no matter you read in the idiot journals of Greenpeace, climate change is not starting in 2050. It is happening now. The exajoule scale form of energy about which I speak kills almost no one. It produces some of the lowest cost energy known. Nevertheless there is a stupid squad around whining continuously about it even as they ignore the destruction of earth's atmosphere from dangerous fossil fuel waste. Obviously the form of energy about which I speak is nuclear energy available from fission.

I also predict that if fusion ever becomes viable, and there's no proof that it will, there will be a stupid squad at the intellectual level of Greenpeace objecting to it.

The question of tritium reserves to start of up a reactor has been exhaustively examined and is right here: http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf

I've referenced this link before, but it has not resulted in reduced nonsensical mythology about this subject, and I doubt it will do so in this instance.

It shows the ITER, a tiny little demonstration reactor, will consume more almost 2/3 of the world's tritium.

Like I say, if you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[gravity]

27. It's all speculation

but that is why we are researching it. Fusion might never become an economical solution to our problem, but it could still be a potential to provide large amounts of clean energy which our society. It is more viable than any of the alternative energies we have now to be used on a large scale, comparable to fossil fuels. It's worth researching, and we don't have to bet the farm on it right now.

Fission power has problems being economically viable for the developing world, and the problems associated with nuclear proliferation. There are also the problems of disposal of nuclear waste, so it's not 100% clean either. It's our best solution at the time for curbing emissions at the time, but it is far from perfect.

The truth is that fossil fuels are still going to dominate the energy production for some time. When it comes down to it, economics will rule energy production, and all future speculation depends on the price of oil and coal 50 years from now.

[NNadir]

28. Actually, the third world is planning to build fission power like crazy.

Vietnam, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Morocco, Ghana and similar countries have all announced the intention to build nuclear power plants.

Countries evaluating nuclear power include Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Ghana and Namimbia.

India, until recently considered third world, has a vast nuclear program and similarly China.

Nuclear power is the cheapest form of electrical energy known, especially if you count external costs, which one should do. Thus it is ideally suited for poor countries. It is desirable in poor countries, unless the plan is to either keep them poor or to gave them grind up their forests for firewood, or to make them burn inordinate amounts of fossil fuels.

Nuclear also produces the lowest amount of so called "waste" of any other known form of energy, and most of this "waste" is actually a resource. There are no examples of people being injured by the storage of so called "nuclear waste," and there are many examples, first, second and third world of people being killed - in vast numbers - by the billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste (and biomass waste) generated around the world today. Thus it is both arbitrary and foolish to insist that "waste" is a problem for nuclear. It is, in fact, the only form of energy for which waste has not proved to be a problem.

Finally, no nation has produced a nuclear weapons arsenal from commercial fuel, and at least two nuclear weapons states, Isreal and North Korea do not have commercial scale reactors. The supposed links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is largely a figment of the imagination, touted by the sort of people who join consumer organizations like Greenpeace.

Most of what you assert is nowhere near being correct.

In the mean time, fusion is a fairy tale, and has been one for almost 50 years now. I'm not against fusion research, but pretending that it's going to be available in reasonable time to meet the immediate crisis is just silly.

[bananas]

16. That wasn't Wasserman's comment, it was added by a reader in the "add your comments" section

Wasserman doesn't mention fusion in that article.

[NNadir]

24. Nevertheless he said lots of really, really stupid things anyway.

His first sentence is a winner:

Twenty-one years ago this week, lethal radiation poured into the breezes over Europe and into the jet stream above, carrying death and disease around the planet...

Amazingly enough he gets even more stupid afterwards, and let's face it, the first sentence is pretty stupid.

[Shoelace]

31. Waxman wasn't being "stupid" with that comment - there's validity to that statement

might have been a bit over the top but not stupid. Actually, it seems that you use that term pretty often so I'm calling you on that. I respect what Waxman has done since we Democrats got control of the House. I think you might serve us all better by reserving that word for the many Republicans who have fought Waxman and all his efforts to the max. In point of fact, if we'd have spent 1/10th the money spent on Nuclear development - on wind energy, solar power, other energy sources yet unknown, I doubt you'd be calling Waxman "stupid" on any account.

At any rate, the under-reported results of Chernobyl were as follows:

Millions of People Affected, Especially Children

From the offices of the Children of Chernobyl Fund come the following figures:

“The reactor spewed tons of uranium fuel, plutonium and other radionuclides three miles into the atmosphere. For 10 days the lethal fire emitted particles 90 times more deadly that those released from the 1945 Hiroshima bomb, and the winds blew the radioactive debris northward across Byelorussia and Europe."

"70% of the invisible toxins rained down on unsuspecting Byelorussian citizens, trapping them under a blanket of future death. Their government continued to lie about the lethal effects of the radiation even so far as to deny and not report the accident."

"Over two million residents, including 600,000 young children, still live in the areas of Belarus contaminated by Chernobyl. Although a steady increase in disease rates, particularly in thyroid cancer, has been demonstrated, the cumulative impact of constant exposure to low-level radiation is officially ignored.”

In a report ten years after the accident by Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) wrote: “The specific features of the release favoured a widespread distribution of radioactivity throughout the Northern Hemisphere, mainly across Europe. Only the Southern Hemisphere remained free of contamination. Activity transported by the multiple plumes from Chernobyl was measured not only in Northern and in Southern Europe, but also in Canada, Japan and the United States.

As a result of the disaster, 600,000 children were immediately exposed to the radiation by Iodine 131, causing their thyroid glands to be seriously effected. This was just those in the Ukraine as a result of the accident. Massive outbreaks of auto-immune thyroiditis and thyroid cancer from all the surrounding areas, villages and other countries have been reported by the Scientific Research Institute of Radiological Medicine.
http://www.pro-resources.net/chernobyl-story.html

WHO has said that there were few followups in terms of cancer related deaths, except for Thyroid cancer from this event.
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/

So maybe Waxman wasn't as "stupid" as you stated.

Also, there's a very good map of areas affected by this incident.

[Kolesar]

32. Harvey Wasserman, not Henry Waxman the Congressman from Beverly Hills...eom

[NNadir]

33. Get back to me when you understand language better.

Your interpretations are pretty bizarre, especially if you've read the UNSCEAR report. It's pretty clear that if you attempted to read this report, you have spectacularly misinterpreted what it said.

Given that millions of people die each year from the ordinary operations of fossil fuel plants - and like everyone else making your case you just don't give a shit - I will assume that you only are interested in people injured by Chernobyl. Yes there were some and the UNSCEAR report covers them fairly well in considerable detail.

Simply because you "care" about these people so much that you value them over 10,000 deaths from fossil fuels, doesn't mean that I find you brilliant.

I field this kind of mindless stuff all the time, and it's weak. For the record, Chernobyl was no where near being the worse energy disaster of all time. The worst energy disaster of all time was the discovery of coal, followed by the discovery of oil, followed by natural gas, followed by the Banquio dam disaster of 1975, which killed more than 200,000 in an event that took a couple of hours. I note that you don't give a fuck about Banquio, have never bothered to view a report on it, care nothing for the dead but still you whine here about a few deaths from Chernobyl as if it were the end of the world.

Kiev, a short driving distance from Chernobyl, is a living and vibrant city, so the disaster could not be as "lethal" as you suppose.

I consider the anti-nuclear position to be extremely thought out, baseless in scientific terms, immoral, dangerous, deluded and yes, stupid.

[Kolesar]

21. Environmentalists are going to have to honestly assess how to replace the 100 nuclear plants that...

...are operating and will come out of service in the next two decades. Should we build another 100 PWR reactors to replace that portion of our electrical generation? Does anybody really think that coal fired plants with CO2 sequestration will be ready to operate in that short period of time? Consider that they are still experimenting and are about to start very limited trials of transforming CO2 or sequestering it underground.

Time-varying wind surely cannot replace what these bulk-power plants do.

Some of you know that I am loathe to endorse nuclear power because First Energy allowed a problem to develop at the Davis Besse plant that *may* have caused a catastrophe. We will never know for sure. We will never know if the control rods could have been pushed in to stop the reactor if it had a rupture and steam release.

I suppose a problem of unethical management could be solved by building "better" designs and by taking the management out of the hands of cavalier capitalists with only a profit motive.

[Shoelace]

30. "cavalier capitalists with only a profit motive" hmmmm

that about says it all doesn't it. Profit motives build substandard plants with substandard cement, ill trained workers, et al. "Cavalier capitalists" take too many shortcuts (Bechtel et al). I'd love to think that we know all that we could about the effects of all the unreported accidents, health hazards via NPPs but without belaboring the point, guess it's the lesser of 2 evils eh?
I'd feel a helluva lot better about the whole situation if we actually had viable oversight within the scope of the actual building, maintenance, and disposal of nuclear waste.
As it sits right now, I trust nobody within the current administration to do what is needed to build them safely, and all that follows.
For that matter, I trust them to NOT do anything but make alot of money off of said NPPS. Govt contracts and all that - very lucrative but probably a damn good investment as it sits right now, fwiw.